Europe took a big step closer on Thursday to its goal of creating cross-border financial supervisors, reaching a “crucial milestone” in efforts to reform a sector blamed for the global recession.
EU states, the European Commission and European lawmakers reached a deal in principle to establish three agencies that will oversee banks, insurers and markets, European Internal Market Commissioner Michel Barnier said.
The agreement also creates a European Systemic Risk Board which would look out for threats to the region’s economy following months of negotiations.
“We have reached a crucial milestone,” Barnier said. “We have reached a political consensus on the creation of a European financial supervisory framework.”
The deal must be approved by EU finance ministers meeting in Brussels on Tuesday and the European parliament sometime this month. The EU hopes to launch the new agencies in January.
Europe is lagging behind the US in efforts to regulate the financial sector as US President Barack Obama signed into law in July the most sweeping reform of Wall Street since the 1930s.
European states reached their own compromise late last year, despite reluctance from Britain to grant too much authority to the new agencies.
“The fact is that we did not see the crisis coming. We did not have the monitoring tools to detect the risk which was accumulating across the system and when the crisis hit, we did not have effective tools to act,” Barnier said.
The new bodies will give Europe “the control tower and the radar screens needed to identify risks, the tools to better control financial players and the means to act quickly, in a coordinated way, in a timely fashion,” he said.
Oversight of the financial sector is in the hands of national supervisors.
Britain, home to one of the world’s biggest financial centers in London, has insisted that decisions of the pan-European agencies should never interfere with a state’s fiscal sovereignty.
London fought to limit the ability of the European agencies to intervene in a crisis by obtaining the right to appeal their decisions. European lawmakers believed this mechanism would weaken the supervisors, but a compromise was reached on Thursday that would prevent any “abuse” of the safeguard, negotiators said.
Britain, which is not a member of the euro single currency area, was also reluctant to make the president of the European Central Bank (ECB) the head of the systemic risk board, but negotiators agreed to make ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet head of the board for five years, although the next appointment would be up for discussion.
A British government spokesperson welcomed the deal, saying it was “a very good outcome for the UK, fully reflecting the priorities secured by” British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne.
CHAOS: Iranians took to the streets playing celebratory music after reports of Khamenei’s death on Saturday, while mourners also gathered in Tehran yesterday Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in a major attack on Iran launched by Israel and the US, throwing the future of the Islamic republic into doubt and raising the risk of regional instability. Iranian state television and the state-run IRNA news agency announced the 86-year-old’s death early yesterday. US President Donald Trump said it gave Iranians their “greatest chance” to “take back” their country. The announcements came after a joint US and Israeli aerial bombardment that targeted Iranian military and governmental sites. Trump said the “heavy and pinpoint bombing” would continue through the week or as long
An Emirates flight from Dubai arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport yesterday afternoon, the first service of the airline since the US and Israel launched strikes against Iran on Saturday. Flight EK366 took off from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) at 3:51am yesterday and landed at 4:02pm before taxiing to the airport’s D6 gate at Terminal 2 at 4:08pm, data from the airport and FlightAware, a global flight tracking site, showed. Of the 501 passengers on the flight, 275 were Taiwanese, including 96 group tour travelers, the data showed. Tourism Administration Deputy Director-General Huang He-ting (黃荷婷) greeted Taiwanese passengers at the airport and
State-run CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) yesterday said that it had confirmed on Saturday night with its liquefied natural gas (LNG) and crude oil suppliers that shipments are proceeding as scheduled and that domestic supplies remain unaffected. The CPC yesterday announced the gasoline and diesel prices will rise by NT$0.2 and NT$0.4 per liter, respectively, starting Monday, citing Middle East tensions and blizzards in the eastern United States. CPC also iterated it has been reducing the proportion of crude oil imports from the Middle East and diversifying its supply sources in the past few years in response to geopolitical risks, expanding
STRAIT OF HORMUZ: In the case of a prolonged blockade by Iran, Taiwan would look to sources of LNG outside the Middle East, including Australia and the US Taiwan would not have to ration power due to a shortage of natural gas, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday, after reports that the Strait of Hormuz was closed amid the conflict in the Middle East. The government has secured liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies for this month and contingency measures are in place if the conflict extends into next month, Kung told lawmakers. Saying that 25 percent of Taiwan’s natural gas supplies are from Qatar, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) asked about the situation in light of the conflict. There would be “no problems” with
RSS